U.S. Pat. No. 4,633,531 to Nimmons discloses a tension mounted face guard on a football helmet wherein a pair of resilient straps in the form of loop enclose wire segments of the face guard, the straps being secured to the vertical side portions of the helmet by suitable fasteners, whereby most of the shock force encountered by the face guard due to blows thereon is absorbed by the tension mounted straps.
Tests performed, in accordance with standards specified by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE), on face guards secured to the helmet by the single strap side connectors of the type disclosed in the abovementioned Nimmons patent, showed that the faceguard may contact the wearer's face due to either of two faults; namely,
(1) Excessive softness or resilience of the strap permits movement of the faceguard into the face.
(2) Excessive stiffness or rigidity of the strap transmits high impact force to the helmet causing it to rotate on the wearer's head resulting in facial contact with the faceguard.
Therefore, from the tests, it was determined that a single component strap selected for one extreme of compact blows will fail to provide suitable protection over the entire range of impact blows.
After considerable research and experimentation, the shock attentuation tension mounting of the present invention has been devised as an improvement on the tension mounting of the type disclosed in the aforementioned Nimmons patent, and comprises, essentially, a pair of looped straps on each side of the helmet, wherein an outer, relatively stiff looped strap encloses an inner, relatively stretchable looped strap which encloses wire segments of the face guard, the pair of looped straps being secured to the side portions of the helment by suitable fasteners.
By this construction and arrangement, the inner strap allows controlled movement of the faceguard toward the helmet with increasing resistance force for shock attenuation, and the outer strap limits the movement of the faceguard toward the helmet and resists breakage at maximum impact force from a frontal blow, the amount of movement being controlled by the selection of relative loop lengths of the outer and inner straps.